The ground around San Francisco Bay is sinking to meet the rising sea, another reason for Bay Area residents to worry about the impact of climate change on their region. A new report suggests that sinking land, known as land subsidence, will increase the potential reach and damage of flooding in the Bay Area, submerging a larger portion of the region by the year 2100 than previously estimated. Subsidence can be caused by groundwater pumping, which can act to “deflate” the ground above it or the gradual compacting of landfill — when lands are filled in an effort to create solid ground to build upon. The authors of the report — Manoochehr Shirzaei, a professor at Arizona State University and Roland Bürgmann, a professor at University of California, Berkeley — have combined land elevation data with rising sea level projections. And they are now challenging the current flood threat […]